In 1942, a German U-boat sank SS Benlomond, leaving Chinese sailor Poon Lim alone in the Atlantic on an eight-foot raft; after surviving 133 days on fish, birds, and rainwater, he was rescued near Brazil and said, “I hope no one will ever have to break that record”

Imagine drifting alone on a tiny life raft in the middle of the ocean, hundreds of miles from the nearest coastline, with no crew, no radio, and no way to call for help. Now imagine doing that for 133 days straight. That is what a young Chinese sailor named Poon Lim survived in 1942, and his survival continues to fascinate researchers and doctors.

According to a study titled ‘Human Water Needs’ published in Nutrition Reviews by researchers at the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, water intake is the single biggest factor in how long a person can survive under stress, since even short-term water loss disrupts nearly every system in the body.

The paper puts hard numbers to that point: it says healthy adult men generally need about 3.7 liters of total water a day, and women about 2.7 liters, with needs rising sharply under strenuous exercise or heat stress. It also notes that water balance is usually maintained only when food and fluid are readily available, which is why deprivation can become dangerous so quickly.


A torpedo, a sinking ship, and an empty ocean
Poon Lim was working as a steward on the British cargo ship SS Benlomond when a German U-boat, U-172, torpedoed it on November 23, 1942. According to uboat.net's ship records, the vessel went down within about two minutes, roughly 750 miles east of the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. Lim was dragged underwater as the ship sank. When he resurfaced, the ship and almost everyone on it were gone. He was the sole survivor; 53 of his shipmates died, including the ship's captain and all eight of its gunners.

He swam to a small wooden life raft, just eight feet long. It had some emergency supplies on board, including biscuits, chocolate, a bit of water, and flares. But Lim had no idea how long he would need to make them last, or if anyone would ever find him.

No food, no water, no rescue in sight
Lim rationed what he had for as long as he could. When the supplies ran out, he had to improvise. He unraveled a rope to make fishing line and bent a flashlight spring into a hook. He crushed biscuit crumbs for bait. When birds landed on his raft, he caught them by hand and dried their meat in the sun to make it last. He even caught a small shark once, using his bare hands and a water can to fight it off, and drank its blood when there was no rainwater to collect.

According to Lim's own account in the Gum Saan Journal, a rescue plane once circled his raft but could not pull him out because the seas were too rough, and no ship stopped to help him during his entire time adrift. For 133 days, Lim was completely on his own.

133 days later, land finally appeared
By April 1943, Lim noticed the ocean water was changing color, a sign that land was near. According to uboat.net's ship records, after 133 days adrift, he was picked up by a Brazilian fishing vessel east of Salinas and landed at Belém, Brazil, on April 8, 1943. He had lost about 20 pounds and could barely stand. According to that same Gum Saan Journal interview, Lim said he never let himself lose hope of being found, and spent his days thinking of his family and praying to keep his mind steady.

His ordeal set a record of 133 days alone on a raft at sea. When a reporter later told him no one had ever survived longer adrift, Lim gave a now-famous response. An archived New York Times report from July 1943 notes that he said, "I hope no one will ever have to break that record."

An American ending to a wartime story
According to Poon Lim's Wikipedia entry, back on land, King George VI awarded Lim the British Empire Medal for his survival. But his story didn't end there. Lim wanted to move to the United States, but American immigration law at the time sharply limited Chinese arrivals. It took a special exception, secured with the help of US Senator Warren Magnuson, for him to finally gain entry, and he became a US citizen in 1952. He settled in Brooklyn, married, raised a family, and spent decades working as a steward on American merchant ships before retiring in 1983. He passed away in New York in 1991.

Why his record still stands
More than 80 years later, Poon Lim's 133 days alone on a raft remain a benchmark. Some castaways have survived longer stretches lost at sea in disabled boats, including a Salvadoran fisherman who spent over a year adrift in the Pacific, but nobody has matched Lim's specific feat of survival completely alone on a raft with almost nothing. It remains one of the most extraordinary true stories of human endurance, one that even modern survival science still uses to understand just how far the body can be pushed.